Wednesday, April 30, 2014

On May 1st Honduran workers, teachers, trade unionists, and all the social movements in resistance will be marching and protesting the latest continuation of the 2009 coup d'e'tat in the form of the new President - Juan Orlando Hernandez. Since taking office at the end of January, Hernandez has quickened the pace of neoliberal privatization, raising the costs of basic foods, creating charter cities, expanding the mining and hydroelectric concessions and increasing militarization, all in the service of the Honduran oligarchy and the multinational corporations and following the blueprint set out by the U.S. government. Below is an historic document - written by Honduran author Ramon Amaya Amador in 1963 for May 1st in commemoration of the 1954 General Strike. May 1st 2014 celebrates the 60th anniversary of that strike.

el español sigue despues del ingles

May is the Road to Victory

(60 years Anniversary of the National General Workers Strike in Honduras)

1954-2014

This article was first published by the beloved Honduran author and activist, Ramon Amaya Amador, in Honduras in 1963.

What historical significance does May have for the people of Honduras? It is just transcendent for the festivities of International Workers Day in which workers around the world lifting their constructive fist greet their class brothers and sisters with the voices of proletarian internationalism?

Why do we get emotional at the sublime memory of the events that occurred in Honduras in 1954, when the workers in the North Coast organized and lifted themselves from their humiliating condition of slaves to their position of free and conscious men? What can we find in the road that started in May and continues into our future?

Answering these questions that arise on this new May First is our objective. There are historical dates in our young history that sometimes are overlooked, because the ruling circles in our society put a miraculous veil of silence over them. One of those dates is May, the seismic month in which the Honduran workers unleashed the strikes of 1954.

Why such proletarian epic is minimized, when it should parallel to other great patriotic events in our history?

May has imprinted into the future the shining blueprint of the grand victory of the humble in Honduras. May is the road of struggle with the perspective of great success for the Honduran people. May is already an ideal, a revolutionary program, a method of action for the masses, their class demands and national liberation.

Sociopolitical view of the times before the strikes

Today, not one Honduran worker ignores that May is the date in which all over the democratic and socialist world International Workers day is commemorated, with the exception that in the capitalist field is still a time for the struggle and demands of emancipation, regularly under very difficult conditions of divisions and repression provoked by reactionary forces and imperialism, to the contrary in the socialist field May is already a date of great popular celebration in which millions of people march, marking the list of accomplishments in the construction of a just society which is a concrete and beautiful realization of the international workers movement.

For a long, long period of time, the struggle of International workers Day was eliminated of the civic calendar of Honduras and the popular masses were not able to celebrate it due to the banned imposed by the reactionary regimes whose class hatred was reflected in a sharp despotism. There weren’t any rights for the workers, just the obligation of producing benefits for the North American Monopolies and the local oligarchies and to starve of misery under the boot of the plantations foremen, executioners and sepoys. In Honduras, neocolonialism flourished with the increasing putrefactive and submissive traitors groups and their daily shameful and anti-patriotic behavior.

In those years which many of us remember (and some remembering, do everything possible to forget, so that the new generation will ignore) the reaction of the powerful serving the Yankee monopolies didn’t’ allow for the workers to organize their unions and yet less to create their own political party, which in the decade of the 20th had already functioned for a short period of time. It didn’t tolerate any manifestation of the workers or the celebration of May 1st. Then the workers and those alert democratic intellectuals were determined to gain the most elementary democratic liberties, among them the right to unionize, since although Honduras had signed the workers agreement with the OAS and UN, the country did not grant these rights to the workers. All the progressive elements were considered “Communist” they were repressed, imprisoned, and deported to Guatemala and other countries.

In those days, the dictatorship was executed by the National Party, so the Liberal Party was in opposition, they were historical rival. Even without being organized, the Liberal Party, supported the working people, the most affected by the regime and it helped them struggle for their demands. The class struggle that took place, particularly in the north coast of Honduras with the agrarian workers known as (los campeños) was at the vanguard and had different tendencies. On one side they were stimulated by the bourgeois circles, land-owners and semi-bourgeois liberals, but with an absolute anti-dictatorial character (anti-Carias, Anti-Galvez) from the position of the traditional warlordism. And on the other side they were trying to cut down its classist essence, change its antimonopolies character which was the vital objective of the workers. They then call us the liberal leaders. “Let’s not touch the gringo companies because that is anti-political; tomorrow when we are in power, we will put our hand on them as they deserve”. Many would accept this in good faith. Others will doubt in in spite of our limited political experience, we suspected treason, as history later demonstrated.

The struggles continued during the decades of shadows, with its natural characteristics of ebb and flow and the particularity that the working class, the peasants and other workers would march as an appendix or socio-political reserve of ruling and parasites classes. The tendency towards a political independence of the workers would present itself as very weak by the lack of cohesiveness and cultural backwardness and the illness of warlordism. But the people of Honduras never gave into the bloody and brutal dictatorship of the feudal land-owners (Carias) nor the demagogy and the oarlock of thebureaucrat bourgeois (Galvez). One day that history must be re-written.

Why US imperialism promoted a change in government in Honduras in 1940?

Wasn’t the gang of Mr. Tiburcio loyal enough to his commitments with the monopolies? Loyal he was and he is today, even though with a relative and subjective resentment that at a certain moment appears objective and laud, but it is resentment not for lack of loyalty to the Yankee lords but rather for excess. In reality they imposed a new president in Honduras (1948) due to the end of World War with the crushing of fascism by the anti-Hitler coalition in which the Soviet Union played a central role. A “new world” had been offered of liberties and welfare, but since that welfare did not rich our countries the people had decided to violently overthrow the many dictatorships fathered by the “good neighbor”. In Honduras, our people had also courageously decided to overthrow the dictatorship since 1944, when in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula and other places the democratic forces were overthrown by the despotic bayonets supported by the US embassy. However the popular struggles continued through those years under dangerous threat, and that is why the imperialist decided in an apparent change, elevating Dr. Manuel Galvez, minister of war under the dictatorship and former lawyer of the banana monopolies, to the presidency, substituting general Tiburcio Carias.

However, and further beyond what is expressed here, other important causes existed: before the new condition that existed in which a high spirit of insurrection prevailed in the popular masses, the strong hand politics of the feudal land-owners , resulted in a provocation towards revolution. That is why the more clear elements of the National Party saw the urgent necessity to create a new type of political approach, they called it “national conciliation” This was the thinking of the buying bourgeois class with the approval of imperialism. Under this regime a transcendent demarcation occurred internally in the National Party, that later will split the party. Before the strong line political line of the feudal land owners the “reformist” tendency surfaced, promoting a policy more in accordance with the reality, a policy that for the bourgeois and the monopolies was a step forward in calming down the anger of the popular masses.

However, the struggle of the people could not be stopped by the policy of “containment and braking” of the “National conciliation”, because the conditions of exploitation and misery for the workers, continued to be the same. Nevertheless, the way in which the oppressed masses were struggling was also changing, they were less violent, and for certain sectors of the opposition, for the liberal oligarchy that the regimen needed to attract, favorable conditions were established so the struggle would be taken to a more fertile terrain. Successfully, they intended to take away the longings of the liberal leaders by giving them some concessions and bureaucratic positions, as a result, the workers were repressed in their anti-monopoly actions, and an open confrontation started against the recently formed Honduran Democratic Revolutionary Party (PDRH).

This was a new party that came into the political arena, elevating a new and patriotic flag, of national unity and clear anti-imperialist sentiment. Mr. Julian Lopez Pineda, an anti-communists theorist and spokesperson of the monopolies initially ridiculed the party baptizing it with the derogative nickname of the “twenties”. But later, when the (PDRH) was supported by the advanced sectors of the working class and had an outstanding militancy and political clarity to the masses, the party became a serious headache to the regime and then Mr. Julian had to throw away his anti-communist weapon against the PDRH and the government began to employ it violent methods of repression. This way the “National conciliation” for the workers and the progressive elements didn’t have patriotic sense, but rather it was the same as the prior dictatorship. However, the proletarian struggles were adopting other organizational forms of clandestine struggle; the government pushed the workers to struggle in the shadows.

At the beginning of the decade of the 50’s the workers continued without legal unions and without a Party of their own. Then May first began to be celebrated under rare conditions. Hiding in the banana plantations, at the beaches by the sea, at an isolated farm of a progressive friend, in close locations where meeting were organized to commemorate the day.

The conditions of the people became distressing while the foreign monopolies will send millions of dollars to the United States and the oligarchies received their part of the shared capital gains. During this time, the banana companies started to pay rent taxes, which was a type of sly bribery by which new leonine concessions were awarded. The economic situation was prosperous, but the misery was rife for the working class, the peasants and other layers of society.

It is with grief and consternation that we receive the news of the assassination on April 11 of compañero Carlos Mejía Orellana, director of marketing for Radio Progreso and member of ERIC-SJ in Progreso.

We want to express our solidarity with all of the compañeros and compañeras at Radio Progreso and ERIC and with the Mejía Orellana family.

At the same time we declare our indignation at this violent act against Carlos who had protective measures ordered by the Inter American Commission on Human Rights (ICHR) and who, like so many communicators, human rights defenders, lawyers and others committed and dedicated to social justice, are systematically assassinated by the owners of power and armaments in a clear strategy to silence the voices of this who demand justice and an end to impunity in Honduras. In almost all these cases there have never been real investigations and the crimes remain in impunity. Since the coup d e’tat in 2009 the level of violence by the State and the powerful has grown in an alarming manner. Paid assassination has become an easy and effective way for those with the money to buy and do away with lives.

We join in the clamor of the Honduran people who today insist on and demand an end to Impunity. We denounce the assassination of Carlos and we demand that the crime be investigated and that all the material and intellectual authors of the crime, be brought to justice and punished.

We recognize that the government of the United States also has a share of the responsibility for the blood bath in Honduras: for the militarization, for the so called security program that does not protect the people but rather has increased the generalized violence, for the constant support of repressive governments and for the exploitation of the country’s resources. We do not accept the double standard and double talk the U.S. government promulgates and we will redouble our efforts against the military aid and against impunity.

The attached letter, signed by 56 human rights and social justice organizations, is motivated by the denial of justice, once again, to José Isabel Morales Lopez. It is a denunciation of the February judicial proceedings and actions of:

· The Public Prosecutor, Jose Reynaldo Canales, from the Ministerio Publico in Trujillo, Colon, Honduras who exhibited prosecutorial misconduct and manipulation of the court

· The Judges of the Tribunal of Trujillo and La Ceiba: Carol Jaqueline Ortega, Luis Alberto Juárez, and Ricardo Geovany Rodríguez, all of whom exhibited judicial misconduct during the course of a trial

· The Judges from the Court of Appeals in La Ceiba: Dilia Iracema Guillén, Garin Enoc Urquía y Rubenia Esperanza Galeano, all of whom, together with the above named judges, violated orders from the Supreme Court of Honduras

· And finally, the Sub-Commissioner of the National Police in the Department of Olancho, Henry Osorto Canales who perjured himself in court with impunity as well as having a history of intimidation, threats and abuse of authority as a member of the National Police.

As human rights defenders, we are outraged by these abuses of authority of the aforementioned members of the justice system of Honduras, and the environment of impunity in which they are able to operate in violating the rights of Jose Isabel Morales Lopez, a peasant farmer from the Aguán region of Northern Honduras and a recognized political prisoner by Human Rights organizations around the world.

We call for the immediate liberty of José Isabel Morales Lopez. We demand a full investigation into the human rights violations and judicial irregularities surrounding the trial as well as the threats and intimidation against the family and community. We further demand that all police, military and security aid be cut until human rights violations end, specifically the continued aid by the United States to the National Police and USAID funding to the Ministerio Publico given the ongoing abuses being perpetrated.

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News Sources / Fuentes de Noticias

Radio Progreso has radio updates (Spanish only) directly from the from the front-lines of the resistance in Honduras.

Une TV is one of the only independent national TV stations in Honduras

Rights Action has been doing good reporting and commentary as events unfold and has people on the ground monitoring the situation. They are also a reliable vehicle through which to get money to the organizations fighting for the restoration of democracy in Honduras.

Defensores en línea is the best (Spanish-only) online source for regularly updated information on the violation of human rights in Honduras.

Spanish - website of the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras about the struggle of the Garifuna people and other resistance and environmental struggles.

School of the Americas Watch has good background information on the coup-plotters training at the Georgia-based School of the Americas / (also known as the School of Assasins) as well as news updates on the coup and a call to action.